The 2015 Remedy applies to members affected by the age discrimination legislation introduced by the 2015 public service pension scheme reforms. This is sometimes known as the McCloud judgment because their case was one of the first to conclude.

As part of the 2015 Remedy work for the Northern Ireland Civil Service, a public consultation is expected to be launched by the Department of Finance in early April 2023. The purpose of this consultation is to seek views on the draft pension scheme regulations and the policy that supports the regulations. The scheme will welcome responses to the consultation to help inform the final policy decisions.

The consultation document will set out how the regulations will work in practice and explain the remedy choices that members will have. It will also cover the technical arrangements for returning all in-scope, active and deferred members of alpha between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022 to the Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme (Northern Ireland) for the remedy period. The consultation is an opportunity for scheme members, who will be affected by the remedy, or any other interested individuals and organisations, to comment on the draft proposals before they are made final.

These changes apply to all eligible members with what is now being called ‘remediable service’ between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2022. The remedy may impact the payment of benefits for remediable service already in payment, as well as benefits that will become payable in the future.

There are about 40,000 affected members, of which there will be a mixture of active, deferred, retired, and deceased members. You can find out if you are in scope for the 2015 Remedy (McCloud) by visiting the Civil Service Pensions (NI) website and using the Am I Affected? tool.

More information about the 2015 Remedy can be found on the Civil Service Pensions (NI) website.